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B.C. Teachers Federation president Jim Iker appealed to Premier Christy Clark Sunday to help get students back into classrooms, just hours after Education Minister Peter Fassbender said public school won’t resume Tuesday and urged parents to apply for financial relief to help pay for daycare for their children.

The comments are the latest indication that the two sides in the prolonged labour dispute remain far apart as they barrel toward to the scheduled start to the school year on Sept. 2. Talks broke down Saturday when veteran mediator Vince Ready walked away from the two sides, leaving little hope for parents, teachers and students that classes will resume that day.

Iker, during a Sunday news conference, expressed frustration with Fassbender and negotiators with the B.C. Public School Employers Association who he said have made no shows of good faith to the BCTF, and called on Premier Christy Clark to sit down with him and cut a deal.

“If the education minister and BCPSEA do not have the authority or the willingness to do what it takes to reach a fair settlement, then Premier Clark needs to become directly involved,” he told reporters. “She can no longer sit on the sidelines.”

Iker said the BCTF indicated a strong willingness to reach a deal this weekend when it trimmed back its demands by $125 million “in the hopes government would respond in a meaningful way.”

But he said BCPSEA negotiators “did not bring one new penny to the table. Nothing new for our students learning conditions or our teachers working conditions.”

Fassbender said at an earlier press conference he was disappointed with the continued stalemate but gave no indication as to when negotiations might resume, and said the province is not going to get back on the “treadmill” of legislating teachers back to work.

“Needless to say. I’m very disappointed for students and parents and teachers that I’m standing here today addressing an issue that I hoped would have a different outcome than we face,” said Fassbender.

He urged parents with schoolchildren to register for financial support from the province (http://bcparentinfo.ca/) as a way to offset some of their added expenses incurred during the strike. Under the program, parents can claim $40 in assistance per day, per eligible student 12 years old and under, to be paid out after an agreement is reached. The launch of the program was frustrated when a link to the application for assistance was not working for part of Sunday.

Fassbender said the sticking point in the negotiations is money.

“The reality is there is still over $300 million of gap between what the government has put on the table that is in keeping with the other public section unions (received in contract agreements) and what the BCTF is asking for,” he said.

“If we were even to consider that, who should we take that money from? Health care? Other social services in the province?

“We have been clear we are not going to put our fiscal plan in this province into deficit to meet the unrealistic demands of the BCTF.”

Peter Cameron, a negotiator for BCPSEA, said the problem “isn’t the negotiating committee on our side or the minister of education.”

“Calling the premier in isn’t going to change the fact that the union is not realistic on its wages and benefits.”

He said the two sides were so far apart that a “splitting of the difference” was not going to happen because “it would be a reward for being unrealistic in the first place.”

“We were pretty frustrated (this weekend),” said Cameron. “We thought maybe Vince (Ready) would be able to do a little bit of reality therapy with them — he’s very good at that — but apparently he didn’t get there.”

Fassbender said he is in communication about the negotiations with both the premier and Finance Minister Mike de Jong, along with his cabinet colleagues.

Rob Fleming, the NDP education spokesman, blasted Fassbender for having “utterly failed kids and families in B.C.” and called for his resignation in a statement Sunday.

“Either he should admit he is not up to the task and step down, or Premier Clark should remove him,” said Fleming in a statement.

Fleming called the provinces’s parent support program a “cynical plan to spend tax dollars intended for the classroom to buy off parents with a cheque for $40 a day while the impasse continues.”

“Like hundreds of thousands of other B.C. parents with kids in the public school system, my family should be spending this last weekend of summer getting ready for the first day of school,” said Fleming. “Minister Fassbender’s failure means instead that parents are scrambling to figure out what to do, and are frustrated and worried about their children’s future. Clearly he is not capable of overseeing B.C.’s education system. ”

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